


Hippocampus

by Poppelganger



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Pre-Canon, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Siblings, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-02-24 15:38:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2586797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poppelganger/pseuds/Poppelganger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ruvik remembers everything, because memories are all he has left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Angelfish

There was an aquarium the size of a cupboard that used to stand in the upper hallway against the wall, silver frame adorned with Celtic knots and metallic sea shells.  He was still young then, but he remembers.  Without fail, he could find Laura, having pulled up one of the chairs from the guest room nearby, sitting next to it, an expression of serene contentment on her face.  

“Come here, Ruben,” she’d call, and he’d eagerly climb into her lap when she opened her arms, “Come and see.  Isn’t it nice?  I could sit here all day and just watch them swim around.”  She pointed at the glass, at the right side of the tank where one of the fish was hiding behind a tall stalk of aquatic greenery.  “See this one with the stripes?  That one’s my favorite.  Which one do you like, Ruben?”

He had studied the tank silently, eyes moving from fish to fish, white and large in the middle, orange and streamlined, the one with blue stripes.  He didn’t see what she liked about them so much, but he looked up at her and her patient eyes and said, “I like the same one you do,” and when she beamed, his heart swelled with joy.

“It’s very pretty, isn’t it?” she asked, attention returned to the fish, “Bright yellow with those lovely blue stripes.  I wonder where a person finds such a creature.”

She wouldn’t speak again after that, and they would sit in silence together, her hands resting on his shoulders to keep him steady as he leaned forward to get a better look.  It wasn’t very interesting, but when he looked at the glass, he saw her reflection behind him, smiling, and he would talk himself into staying still a while longer.

Yes, he remembers that old fish tank even now, remembers every groove in its silver frame and every fish that ever swam in it, and yet he can’t bring himself to remake it in the living memories he conjures of the once-proud Victoriano home reduced to dilapidated old ruins, blood-spattered curtains lining dusty hallways, filled with a million lost souls.  There are many things he can recreate, though rarely perfectly, but when he thinks of the gallons of water suspended in a glass box fitted to a metal frame and all of the living things inside of it, he can’t.

Or rather, he won’t.  He simply refuses to.

Because aside from sitting in blissful silence beside it, he also remembers peering into the hallway through a crack in one the doors facing his favorite spot, and he remembers seeing their father standing out there with her, hands clasped behind his back, and even though the man was turned away and speaking in hushed tones, he could make out a few of the words that passed between them, _“a nice young man,”_ and, _“a bit sudden, isn’t it?”_ and, _“he’s almost eight, Laura, would you stop coddling the boy?”_

And after he left, she would slump back into the chair and watch the fish again, whispering secrets to them, perhaps asking if they’d be willing to trade places with her.

“Sometimes I fancy being a fish,” she’d murmur, “It really wouldn’t be much different, though, I suppose.  We both live in worlds made of four walls.  But at least yours are glass; you can see outside and dream little dreams.  I can’t even do that.”

But the pain in her eyes would vanish as soon as he came into the hallway.  He knew it wasn’t gone; she just crammed it all deep inside where she thought he wouldn’t see it.  “Oh, Ruben,” she said, lips drawing up into a smile that did not, could not, reach her eyes, “I didn’t see you there.”  He would frown when her gaze returned to the fish once again, the quiet creatures gliding gracefully through the tank, living their ignorant, short lives.  “Do you want to come look, too?” she offered, and he came to stand beside her, expression blank as he watched them.

Her smile, he saw, was not directed at him, but at the fish.  Small, simple beings, swimming in circles, too stupid to remember when they had last eaten, always rising to the surface at the promise of food.  He stared into their big, bulbous eyes, and they stared back, and he hated them.

He also remembers that she wanted to be a nurse.  She’d never said such a thing to him, or to their father or mother, to anyone at all, really.  But she’d written it in her diary, and when she wasn’t looking, he would sneak into her room and take it from beneath her pillow, read and reread passages, memorize her handwriting and revel in knowing things that no one else did.  They were secrets that she had not told him, but they were shared nonetheless.  He was the only one who knew this about her.

The knowledge was his and his alone.  The fish could not know, nor could they understand.  It filled him with pride.  

He listened to the large doors at the main entrance creak open and slam shut when his father came home at the end of the day, and he would cease his studies, counting the footsteps it took until he reached the top of the stairs.  He couldn’t make out their voices from his room, so he would tiptoe to the door and push it open just enough to see them, and he would wait until his father was gone and she was sitting still, hands fisted in the brilliant red fabric of her dress as she fought tears, and he would swoop in to save her with his large, innocent eyes, offering himself to be held, and she would love him for it.

But time would pass, and suddenly she would no longer be looking at him.  Her eyes, red and puffy, would always be turned on the aquarium, at the striped fish, and she would whisper more secrets to them that he would be unable to hear even when he strained his ears.  It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair.

_It just wasn’t fair._

He remembers standing at the top of the stairs in the middle of the night beside the aquarium with a candlestick in his hand, staring down at them and trying to figure out why she loved them so much.  Why, why, _why_?  Why were her eyes always drawn to them?  Why did she tell them her secrets so willingly when he had to steal her diary just to learn a single thing?  

The one with the blue stripes seemed to linger at the front of the tank, drifting by ever so slowly, as if aware of his presence, of his jealousy, of his anger.

He leaned all of his weight against it and the silver legs scraped across the floor.  Slowly, slowly, it began to tip, and he straightened up immediately, watching the water slosh out of the top as the tank righted itself.  The fish swam in panicked circles, helpless, _stupid_.  He pushed again, harder, watched the striped one bury itself in the greenery with its big, glassy facing him as if pleading with him to stop, as if silently asking, _why?_

With a final shove, it shattered on the ground, and the sound echoed all the way down the hall as water and sand and fish slid over the tile floors.  He went to find her favorite one, the one with blue stripes, flopping pitifully in a shallow puddle, mouth opening and closing as it spun in circles, silent cries for help going unheard in the mansion as the echoes stopped and it again fell silent.  

He stayed where he was, for the first and only time transfixed by the fish as she had been, unable to take his eyes away from the tiny creature that trembled and splashed around, unable to do anything but struggle to survive under his scrutiny, until he heard footsteps coming from around the corner and he hurried back to his room, slamming the door shut behind him, putting out the candle, and diving back into bed, pulling the covers up to his chin.  He heard his mother gasp and his father mutter something, and their footsteps moved away until they were again inaudible.  

In the morning, he woke to find her kneeling on the floor, the edges of her nightgown dark with dampness, as she held the striped fish in her hands.  The door shut with a creak behind him and she turned to look at him, eyes wide and full of tears.  “Ruben,” she’d whispered, “Be careful.  There’s broken glass on the floor.”  As he came closer, he saw a smear of red in the puddles leading to where her feet were tucked beneath her.  He stepped carefully over the glass and came to sit beside her, looking at the dead fish in her hands.  “Isn’t it sad?” she asked, “Look at him.  Just yesterday, he was swimming and playing.  They all were.  What a terrible accident.”  She shook her head, long hair swaying with every movement.  “Ruben,” she beckoned him closer, lowering her voice, and he leaned in, “Father says it was an accident, but...I’m not so certain it was.  He never much cared for the fish.”

“That’s horrible,” he whispered back, “What a terrible reason to do something like this!”

She clutched his shoulder in her hand, and her grip was not gentle like when they would sit together, but desperate and bruising.  He held his breath in anticipation.  “Please,” she said, “Don’t...don’t tell Father I said that.  Promise me?”

A secret, just for him.  He glanced down at the fish, forgotten on the cold floor, and smiled a bit as he whispered, “I promise.”

She held onto him as though drowning, and he hugged her back, feeling once again as though everything was alright.

A maid came through the hallway in the afternoon to clean up the mess, and the next time he looked, there was no trace of the fish tank.  As if it had never been there.  When he came up from the basement and climbed to the second floor, she was waiting for him there, smiling gently, her attention on him and him alone.

Exactly how it should be.


	2. Ashes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a research paper due next week so no update then, but I'll be back the week after. Thank you to those who have read/reviewed!

The brain, he remembers learning early on, was not the way he thought it would be.

He had expected some sort of complicated, perhaps even elegant structure that buzzed with knowledge, the secrets of intelligence laid out plainly in its simple appearance.  But when he had removed the head of a pig--which nobody ever seemed to notice had gone missing from the farmhouse down the road--set it on the table in his “workshop,” carefully sliced off the scalp and peered inside, he saw only a pinkish mass of gelatinous tissue.  He had reached in with both hands, trying very carefully to remove it, but it had slipped around in his fingers and eventually fell on the table, droplets of blood and mucous splattering around it, and he’d stared down in disgust.

He had wondered, This is what dictates thought and feeling?  This is what rules over memory and movement?  This is the complicated organ that mystifies the brightest scientists even still?  It was only the brain of a pig, but he had seen pictures of comparisons in textbooks and he knew that the human brain was similar in appearance.  On paper, it had seemed so much different, so beautiful, every part carefully arranged inside, perched at the top of the spinal cord like a king in his throne.

The limp, wet mess in front of him seemed so inferior to his idea of what the brain should be like, so soft and fragile, falling apart further under his hands.  He couldn’t identify any of the parts, it was just a lump of organic matter, ugly and bloodstained.

There had to be more to it, he’d thought, there had to be some secret he hadn’t figured out, something more interesting.  He’d read about the hypothalamus and the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex and the hippocampus, and he wanted to find them, wanted to see how unconscious processes and fine motor control and memory were dictated, wanted to see it in action.  

There had to be more, he told himself, he just needed more test subjects.

*

 

He remembers how much he hated the staff that his father hired to take care of the house, the maids and the butlers and the chefs.  They were all so nosy, always gossipping and whispering when they thought he wasn’t around, always huddled together when his father was out, gathered like a herd of cattle.  

When he went to get a glass of water from the kitchen, he heard them in the next room, but paid them no mind at first, turning the knob for cold water.  “I hear they’re looking for a husband for Miss Laura,” one of the maids had said, and the others had gasped as if scandalized, “She’s a beautiful young lady, though.  With how quick Mr. Victoriano is about these sorts of things, I’m amazed there hasn’t been a wedding yet.”

“Perhaps it’s her personality?” one of the others said, and they all giggled.  He bristled at the remark, shutting off the faucet, and started to listen.

“No, no,” a third chimed in, “Miss Laura is so kind.  She’s too kind, I think.  That must be it.”

“Too kind?  How do you mean?”

“It’s her brother, I’ll bet,” the first maid said, fingers pressed to her chin in thought, “I heard her being scolded for doting on him just the other day.  Why, she spends so much time with him they ought to be paying her as a nanny!”

“It makes sense,” another said, “The boy’s not any better for it, I’m afraid.  He doesn’t act much like a child; he doesn’t talk to anybody, doesn’t get on well with his father or mother.  Won’t ever let the poor girl do anything on her own.  Poor Miss Laura, just trying to do a good thing.  I bet she hates it.”

“I bet she can hardly stand it any longer!”

“I bet she can’t wait to be married and get out of this damned place.”

He remembers coming to stand beneath the archway that framed the kitchen, taking his glass half-filled with cold water, holding it out over the hardwood floor, and dropping it without warning.  He remembers the way they all screeched and looked around like frightened animals, collective gazes settling on him.

“Ruben, dear, are you alright?” one of them stammered, “Did you hurt yourself?”

He hated them, hated the way they talked about him and Laura, like they had any right, like they even knew what was going on, hated the way they pretended to care about him, hated them for being in his home.  But he felt a twinge of satisfaction at their wariness, at how their eyes were wide and fearful when they looked at him, wondering if he knew what they’d said, wondering if he’d tell someone.  He had power over them, he'd realized, and not just because he was the son of their employer.  No, he had power because they were afraid of him, of what he could do to them.

“You’d better clean that up,” he said coldly, and walked away, leaving them shaking in his wake.

*

Days and weeks and months after overhearing the maids, he still thought about the things they said.  He remembers the way he threw himself into his personal research to try to drown out such thoughts, how every time he got ahold of a squirrel or a cat he would imagine their faces as he held it down on the table, he would imagine their voices in place of its frightened mewling, he would imagine their wide eyes as he made an incision at the back of the neck, jammed the blade in until he hit bone, and started sawing through hair and flesh.  He thought of his sister often, of her kind face and gentle hands.  He thought of the fish she watched with sad eyes, the things she told them, how she lived the way they did, asked if they wanted to switch places.  

He tried not to think about it, but his thoughts would wander sometimes.  She had been withdrawing from him lately on their father’s wishes, distancing herself by retreating to her room most of the day, and while he had more time to his experiments, it wasn’t a trade he was happy with.

She didn’t want to leave him, he told himself.  He couldn’t see any reason.  She was beautiful and kind and could get married if she wanted, but she wouldn’t, she would avoid it as long as she could no matter how hard their father pushed, because he was important to her and she didn’t want to leave him.  She didn’t, she wouldn’t, she would never do that to him.  

He talked himself into it most days, but sometimes, his doubts would get the best of him.  He would sneak up the stairs after washing the blood and gray matter off of his hands, peek into her room and see her sitting on her bed, knees tucked under her chin.  And he would knock then, come up with something innocuous to ask her, and she would brighten at the sight of him.  Nobody else could make her smile like that.  Not either of their parents,  not any of the maids, and not any boy she would ever meet who wanted to marry her.  Only him.  He was the only one.  She would tell him this, and he would close his eyes and feel safe with her arms wrapped around him.  

“I’m so sorry we haven’t been able to play together,” he remembers her saying once.  “I miss spending time with you, Ruben.”

“I miss you, too,” he’d said, and then hopped off the bed, “So why don’t we go play now?”

Her smile became sad once again and he felt his heart sink.  “I can’t right now.”

“But why not?” he pressed.  

She shook her head.  “It’s a grown-up thing.  It’s hard to explain.”

“I know Father wants you to get married.”  She had flinched at the mention of the man.  “And you’re not supposed to spend so much time with me.”

Her eyes softened.  “You are such a smart boy,” she’d said quietly, and that was what he loved best about her, the way she treated him, the way she admired his intelligence rather than feared it.  Everyone else in the world looked down at him with fear and disgust, but not her.  Never her.  “I’m sorry, Ruben.  It wasn’t fair of me to be so cold to you, no matter what Father says.”  

He tried to keep from sounding too hopeful.  “So, can we?”

She smiled and took his hand.  “Yes, we can.”

*

He remembers the farmhouse.

The first time he found it was with her, searching for a place where they could go and not have to worry about their father coming home, sending them both to their rooms in anger.  She had been eager to get out of the house, beyond the four walls of her fish tank, and he had been content to just follow her for miles, walking until they were breathless, laying on their backs in a field of sunflowers.  The farmhouse had been in that same field, and they’d spent hours there the first time they went, playing hide and seek and seeing how high they could climb.  She would never go very far, but she always waited on the ground when he started to climb, ready to catch him if he should fall, always smiling in a way that she never could at home.

“Laura, where are you?” he remembers saying, unable to keep the smile out of his voice, as he wandered in the dark.  With the large barn doors shut, the only light came from a window high above them, dust dancing in the sunbeam, and he glanced back at it now and then to see if he could catch her darting through it.  He heard her giggle somewhere to his right.  “I know you’re in here.  I can hear you breathing.”

Her footsteps danced around him.  He knew exactly where she was now, but he still pretended to spin in confused circles until she chose to step into the light, waiting with open arms.  

He remembers.  He remembers that.

It had been Claude Debussy, Clair de Lune, and she loved it.  He didn’t particularly like the piano, but that song always brought her out of her room.  He could play just that movement for hours and she would stay for every minute.  Clair de Lune.

He remembers, remembers how soft her dress was when he laid his head in her lap and she stroked his head.  Her favorite dress, even though Father hated it, even though he wanted her to wear something more mature.  When he thinks of her now, he thinks of her in that dress.  He remembers her in that dress, remembers, remembers,

going home from the farmhouse, exhausted, holding her hand, the orange sky overhead, sunflowers, Clair de Lune.  He remembers

warmth and heat.  Too much heat.  Yellow and orange, sky and sunflowers, so far away.  The door wouldn’t open, and she had tried, she had tried, pushed with her whole weight against it, but it didn’t open, and the flames licked away his skin, clung to her dress, her beautiful dress, red to brown to black, unraveling at the edges, burning away her long hair, reflected in her fearful eyes.  She wasn’t afraid for her, wasn’t even thinking of herself, she just saw him, saw him and the window, and he thinks she wasn't even using conscious thought, just moved, just grabbed him by the hand, fingers on fire, pulled him up the ladder, flames still eating them, helped him reach the window frame where the light had come from and the dust had danced, and she pushed, and the noise he heard when she fell, the _scream_ ….

 

*

 

He remembers being wrapped in bandages, waiting for everything to start hurting, but it never did.  It was as if he'd broken somehow, shattered like glass--like a fish tank--and still hadn't noticed, a walking jumble of pieces that didn't fit together anymore.  Soon, it wasn't just the pain that he didn't feel anymore--he didn't hate the maids when they whispered about  _poor Miss Laura, poor thing,_  nor the men who guiltily shuffled out of the public eye when it was brought to light that they had been in the area before the fire.  He didn't feel any closer to his mother and father who smothered him in kindness and concern, and he didn't cry when he was told that the funeral would be in the coming days.  It was all a dream that he was living, or so it felt, a dream where there were no consequences, no pain, no true future.  

It was during this dreamlike time that he first met the man who would help him and destroy him, a man who he once admired, whom he thought he shared something in common with.  

He remembers Dr. Jiminez sitting him down at the desk with the head of a cat, and telling him that it wasn't enough, that he would never get any further without investigating a human brain.  "Now, remember," he had said, "That what we're doing is not wayward experimentation without purpose.  We have clear questions and hypotheses.  While we know we are doing important work, it will be difficult to get further support without any data to begin with."  He paused.  "I suggest finding those who will not be missed."

He remembers that he did not hesitate then, but that it took him a moment to answer because he was suddenly hearing Claire de Lune in his head, imagining where to place his hands on the keyboard.  He could see her smiling out of the corner of his eye, waiting for him to turn around and find her with her arms open.  "I believe there are a few men who recently lost their land being investigated for arson," he said, and Dr. Jiminez hadn't given it much thought, only promised to see what he could do.  

And later, when the man kept good on his promise, providing him with the test subjects he had always wanted, he knew his future was not looking the way he had previously imagined it, but for the moment--and he didn't smile when he drove the blade into the writhing, captive subject's skull, because he felt no joy--things were exactly the way they should be.


	3. Ataraxia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait.
> 
> I sat on this chapter for a while because it gave me some trouble, but here it is.
> 
> Hopefully, this isn't the last thing I write for this fandom!

After the fire, it all starts to blur together.

But his mind is not the mess his body is.  He can remember everything, just not the sequence in which it all occurred.  

He can clearly recall the ominous silence that seemed to settle over his home.  He remembers being young and foolish and numb.  He caught himself creeping up to her room some nights, peering around the doorway as if expecting to find someone inside.  And he did, he did expect it; he expected all of the days that ran together to be a long dream, and for him to wake any minute, for him to see her with her long black hair and red dress standing at the top of the stairs with her arms open, smiling like she always did, genuine or not.  Despite the evidence having been right in front of him--or rather, behind, as he crawled away from the inferno and heard her burn alive--and all around him in the unnerving silence of his mother and father, he not only hoped that she would come back, but _believed_ she would.

He remembers coming up the stairs one day and finding strangers moving in and out of his sister’s room, how his mother stood waiting in the hallway like she knew he would come by, and how she took him aside and told him--very gently--that they were just going to clean up a bit, just move a few things around.

He remembers the searing anger that flashed through his mind because he was no fool.  They were not “cleaning;” they were going to strip the wallpaper and replace the furniture and throw out all of her clothes, make it look as though she had never existed.

“I knew you wouldn’t be happy about this,” his mother had said, her tone infuriatingly calm and patient, “But it’s for the best, Ruben.  We need to do this in order to move on.  We need to stop holding onto the past--onto Laura.”

At the mention of her name, he felt something inside of him snap, and he tore away from his mother’s reaching hands, glaring at her.  “You can’t get rid of her things,” he remembers practically hissing, “She’ll need them when she comes home.”

“Ruben,” his mother had said helplessly, looking like she wanted to throw her arms around him in comfort and a bit like she wanted to cry, “You know better than that.  I know you do.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” he said, brushing past her to get to his own room a few doors down.  She didn’t follow him.

He had sat on the edge of his bed with his head buried in his hands and been frustrated and confused, head throbbing, desperate tears forcing their way to the surface, and he couldn’t understand any of it.  He thought he was completely numb--apathetic before the fire and nerves dead afterwards--and yet there was a terrible ache in his chest like a gaping hole had opened, and there was no substitute for what had been there before.

*

Sometime after that, Dr. Jiminez came to visit, and he brought a preserved brain in a glass jar.

“There’s a rather popular idea floating about in philosophy these days,” he’d said, setting it on one of the tables in the study, “They call it ‘brain in a jar.’  Imagine if, in fact, all the world as we perceive it is simply the machinations of some mad scientist, and that we are all nothing more than brains floating in vats, being stimulated to believe that we are going about our business.”

It’s the first time he’s ever heard of it, and initially, he can only think that the idea is ridiculous.  “I’m not interested in philosophy,” he’d said.

Only now, as he looks back, can he see the horrible irony in their conversation.  Even with all of that time running together, days turning to weeks, and months turning to years, every day another dull, hollow dream that he passed through half-awake, there are a few things that stick out even now, test tubes and copper wires, brains in jars, blood on manila folders, living bodies coming into his workshop and leaving as slabs of meat, eyes that did not see, ears that did not hear, mouths that did not speak.  He knows what happened, but the memory is blurred when he tries to recall those moments, giving way to white noise.  

_Clair de Lune._

_Sunflowers._

_Her red dress._

Blood, too, lots of blood, because they had to drag him kicking and screaming, he would not go without a fight, he would not let Jiminez take everything, would not let him just do as he pleased, would not let all of the years since Laura’s....

Would not let all that time, all that research, go to waste, would not stand to let all of knowledge and progress go up in smoke like...like....

It hurt when it happened, he’s fairly certain.  Nothing had hurt for a long time, but the way they took him apart was so slow and deliberate--peeling flesh from muscle and muscle from bone, just painful enough to keep him aware, just gentle enough to keep him alive.  It took hours, and he was awake for the entire thing, unable to do anything but stare up at the glaring luminescent hospital lights overhead until he didn’t even have eyes anymore.  Everything after that he remembers differently, more directly, because everything after that was so much better.

They wanted to bury their mistakes and lock him up where no one would ever hear him again, but they forgot to throw away the key.

*

He remembers the fish tank, though, to this very day.  Maybe because memories are all he has.

Fractured, inverted, edges jagged and digging into his fingers when he tries to put them back together _like the pieces of that damned aquarium embedded in the soles of her feet,_ a jigsaw puzzle with no solution or meaning.  Not thoughts or feelings, just memories and memories alone.  And he tries to keep it from falling apart, crams himself full of all of that broken glass and bitterness, never flinches because he doesn’t feel a thing, not discomfort or pain or agony, nothing at all.

He has been robbed of absolutely everything--his body, his mind, his legacy, his research, his own sister--but his memories belong to him and him alone.  Early experiments in the basement, the color of her hair, his mother’s voice, his father’s disapproving frown, sunflowers, Clair de Lune, those fucking fish and that goddamn fish tank, dust and rust and bloodstains on the floor, lobotomies and electroshock and years of trial and error, a willingness to learn and a keen intuition to make up for a lack of formal education; and no one can take any of it away from him.

No one can take anything from him ever again.  No matter how many brains they put in vats, no matter how many people try to connect and understand and stop him, no matter what they do, they can’t steal anything anymore, because his memories are his, and he is in control now.  He shows his defiance with his genius, using his memories to create and recreate places and people, populating the world that is his mindscape.  It isn’t perfect, because human memory is fundamentally flawed, but unlike memories, his creations do not degrade over time--they remain the same unless he wills their change.  Any and all decay is at his whim.

It’s only a matter of time before he makes her, too, from scratch, from distant, faded memories, the long, dark hair he loved, the fear and the anger as he stumbled away from the burning barn and all he saw was sunflowers, tall and silent even as he clutched their stems when he fell into the dirt, and they burned with him, they burned like she did, and it was only fair that they should burn, too.

He makes her again, just like he remembers and yet not at all, gives her the strength to protect herself, claws that can rend and tear but can also rest gently on his shoulders as she looms over him like she always has, smiling, at him and only him, and everything is alright, everything is exactly how it’s supposed to be, even if it’s all wrong.  

“Laura,” he says gently, wrapping scarred arms around her torso, and she embraces him with all four of hers, and he feels truly needed.  She can’t exist without him now.  

_Exactly as she should be._


End file.
